


our turn to carve windows

by notquiteaghost



Series: there is an ocean in my soul [2]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Culture, Established Relationship, M/M, Non-binary character, Other, author thinks too much about the sociological implications of the scope of the republic, if youre trans and also a nerd then boy do i have a fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 06:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10848537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquiteaghost/pseuds/notquiteaghost
Summary: "When I first discussed gender with Qui-Gon, he was quick to suggest alternative pronouns. It's the easiest thing to change, and naturally he was very eager to make me more comfortable in whatever way he could. We tried they/them first, but," Obi-Wan wrinkles his nose, "I couldn't work out the appeal, so then we... Well, Qui-Gon made a list, and we worked through it."Cody might be beginning to see where this is going."And none of them fit," Obi-Wan says, with a deep resignation to hir voice that makes Cody's chest ache. "None of them felt right, none of them felt likeme, and eventually I settled on ze/hir simply because they were common enough I wouldn't have to conjugate them for every other person I met."In which Cody does what clone troopers do best, and Obi-Wan has far more emotions than ze is comfortable with.





	our turn to carve windows

**Author's Note:**

> **in this fic obi-wan is non-binary and uses neutral pronouns.** this fic is entirely about gender, culture  & how there are always norms and always people who go against them. if you're making a face at 'non-binary' then my dude close this tab you are not this fic's intended audience.
> 
> title is from here. there's an explanation of some of the worldbuilding stuff in the end notes. i have a lot of feelings about space gender!

The first time Kenobi had made Cody tea after a battle, ze had claimed to have made a full pot on autopilot - _I'm having trouble adjusting to no longer having a Padawan, I'm afraid. He likes this particular blend far more than I do_ \- and had practically forced Cody to drink it, for a given value of 'forced'.

Cody knew what Kenobi was doing, of course, he isn't an idiot, but he still let himself sit in Kenobi's quarters on the Negotiator (not nearly as fancy as _eyayad_ gossip would lead you to believe) and drink strange fruit tea while Kenobi gently coaxed him into the most informal debrief possibly any trooper in the GAR has ever had.

And, okay, so it wasn't all that bad. So maybe Kenobi had some sixth sense for Cody's tea preferences, maybe he'd rather debrief in stuttered bursts as he sorted through his thoughts and the conversation jumped between the op and the latest Temple gossip. Maybe he would've walked barefoot over a bed of vibroblades if afterwards he got to spend time with Kenobi.

Maybe he _is_ an idiot.

But still. It wasn't something he needed to encourage.

(For those exact reasons, even. The more time he spent alone with Kenobi, the harder resisting the urge to lean over and press their lips together became.)

General Kenobi, however, is something of a force of nature when ze wants something, and no matter how much Cody protested, he inevitably found himself in Kenobi's quarters, with tea or caf or, on one memorable occasion, Alderaanian wine.

(In hindsight, the wine was either the worst idea they've ever had, or the best. Obi-Wan drunk on wine is affectionate, impulsive, and even more of a flirt than ze is sober. The resulting drunken makeouts could have irreparably ruined their working relationship.

Could have, but didn't. Cody has Jedi-wrangling down to an art by this point. Obi-Wan got five words into hir halting, hungover explanation of why this won't work before Cody kissed hir again.

When they pulled apart, Cody explained that if Obi-Wan genuinely doesn't want this then that's fine, but in his opinion they're at kriffing war and they should take the good wherever they can get it. Obi-Wan, lips kiss-red and cheeks flushed pink, conceded the point.)

And at time went on, the hours he spent with Obi-Wan became less and less focused on the immediate aftermath of the latest op, or the plan for the next one, the troops, the war at all, until Cody was knocking on Obi-Wan's door of his own accord because if he didn't rant to someone about the latest episode of the holodrama Waxer had got them all hooked on then he was going to explode.

"Ah, Cody," Obi-Wan says as ze opens the door, smiling at him warmly. Ze has already stripped out of most of hir clothes, wearing only the long and loose undertunic ze favours for sleep, and the sight of hir pulls hard at Cody's chest.

"I brought more of those biscuit things."

"If this is a ploy to get me to eat, I'll have you know I had two ration packs not three hours ago."

"What, a guy can't just do something nice for his partner?"

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow at Cody as ze settles cross-legged on hir couch, Cody sitting beside hir. "It would certainly be a first."

"Guess I'm eating all these biscuit things by myself, then."

The evening passes slowly, leisurely. They curl up on the tiny couch, entwining limbs with practised ease, and take turns rambling out their holodrama theories as they eat their way through the biscuit things. Obi-Wan had been several episodes ahead of Cody, having had the more recent stint of medical leave of the two of them, and Cody has just caught up thanks to a particularly long hyperspace trip. (Thank the Force for holodramas, because the 212th only ever get sent to the farthest reaches of the Outer Rim.)

It's when they're discussing the latest episode's contribution to the on-going 'Jeylah is nàbhais and closeted' subplot that Obi-Wan gets tense. It doesn't take a genius to work out why.

Jeylah is the entire reason Obi-Wan started the show; while the galaxy has no shortage of holos involving nàbhais characters, there's still a bias, and Jeylah's narrative - not realising their gender until adolescence, being a species with no 'biological basis' for their gender, general self-esteem issues - strikes rather close to home for his Jedi.

"You alright?"

"–they should just– Hmm?" Obi-Wan blinks, confusion clear on hir face. "Oh, yes, I'm fine."

"Okay," Cody says agreeably, "but you're not, though."

"What? No, I'm perfectly fine." Cody frowns. "There's hardly a need to look at me like that, I'm fine, it's nothing." Cody frowns harder, and Obi-Wan winces and finally stops skirting round the issue. "It's just– The scene where Jeylah looks up pronouns? It, ah. Stirred up some things."

"What sort of things?"

"Cody, please, it's really not important."

"If I've learned anything since I left Kamino," Cody says, giving Obi-Wan an unimpressed look, "it's that a Jedi saying something isn't important is a surefire sign it's of the greatest kriffing importance."

Obi-Wan sighs. "You're not going to let this go, are you."

"It's bothering you, so no, I'm not." Cody pulls his Jedi closer, letting hir rest hir head on his shoulder and resting a hand on hir hip. "Did someone say something? Do I need to have another talk?"

"No, no, nothing like that, just... You know Basic has more than one set of neutral pronouns?"

"Basic has more than one set of every pronoun you could think of. Basic has a pronoun problem."

A small grin flashes briefly across Obi-Wan's face, before being replaced by hesitancy as ze picks hir next words carefully. "I... When I first discussed gender with Qui-Gon, he was quick to suggest alternative pronouns. It's the easiest thing to change, and naturally he was very eager to make me more comfortable in whatever way he could. We tried they/them first, but," Obi-Wan wrinkles hir nose, "I couldn't work out the appeal."

"That's your Coruscant up-bringing talking," Cody teases. "They're more natural if you grow up knowing more than one person who uses them."

"Yes, yes, the Temple is sheltered and terrible, I was deprived a decent childhood, etcetera etcetera. As I was saying, they/them didn't fit, so then we... Well, Qui-Gon made a list, and we worked through it."

Cody might be beginning to see where this is going.

"And none of them fit," Obi-Wan says, with a deep resignation to hir voice that makes Cody's chest ache. "None of them felt right, none of them felt like _me_ , and eventually I settled on ze/hir simply because they were common enough I wouldn't have to conjugate them for every other person I met."

Knowing his Jedi well enough to predict when the root cause of a problem is his self-esteem issues banging heads with the galaxy's bigotry is not that triumphant of a feeling. Mostly, Cody's angry.

"You shouldn't have to settle," he points out. He's proud of how calm he keeps his voice.

"I'm not–" Obi-Wan starts, then visibly remembers it was hir who used 'settled' first. Ze sighs. "It's really not that important."

"Mhmm. I sense Jedi bullshit."

Obi-Wan has no reply to that, which is telling enough.

"You were working up to arguing you shouldn't care how you're referred to at all, because it's vanity or selfishness or," Cody waves a hand through the air, " _whatever_. Don't try to tell me you weren't, and also don't actually do it, because I will punch you."

It speaks to how serious this conversation has become that Obi-Wan doesn't make hir usual joke about the importance of nonviolent conflict resolution.

"No one questions an aist Jedi's right to their pronouns," Cody continues, really warming to his theme now, "so no one gets to question yours. If it were really a problem, then _all_ Jedi would use the same pronoun, and there's a difference between avoiding vanity and stripping away every trace of individuality entirely."

Obi-Wan swallows and starts, voice shaking a not-insignificant amount, "As a matter of fact, the degree of individuality any one Jedi should have is actually a greatly debated–"

"Shut the fuck up," Cody interrupts, but gently. Obi-Wan is one loud noise away from visibly trembling. "We are not getting into philosophy right now, at all, but especially not a debate where you play devil's advocate out of some twisted sense of obligation and, also, need I remind you I am a _clone_?"

Obi-Wan lets out a long breath and says, voice still shaking, "Right. That's– You're right. My apologies."

Damn it all, but Cody's Jedi makes him want to hit things sometimes.

He lets out a long breath of his own and pulls hir yet closer, pressing a kiss to hir hair instead of starting another near-argument about Obi-Wan's compulsion to apologise for things that are neither hir fault or requiring of apology. "Anyway. You were saying something about the meta implications of Jeylah's choice of pronouns?"

 

* * *

 

"So," Cody starts, three weeks and two conflicts with the Separatists with casualty rates high enough they're already being referred to as the Battle of [Insert Location Here] later, "You know how Mando'a has only one singular pronoun set?"

"I'd hardly call a single word a set," Obi-Wan says without looking up from hir datapad, but ze looks intrigued.

They're in Obi-Wan's quarters on the Negotiator, which is currently hurtling through hyperspace in the general direction of the Outer Rim and whatever trouble Skywalker and his troops have gotten into this time. (There was a briefing, of course, but Cody hasn't slept in three days. He'll read it again when he has the energy to absorb the intel).

He'd only just managed to get Obi-Wan off the bridge and starting towards hir bed when they got the orders to change course. He's only really bringing up pronouns again to distract Obi-Wan from heading right back to the damn bridge.

"Well. Might be worth a try."

Obi-Wan tilts hir head, brow creasing in a thoughtful frown. "Are you suggesting I use _kaysh_ as my pronoun?"

Cody shrugs.

Obi-Wan mulls the idea over for several seconds, and then, predictably, starts pulling holes in it. "Mando'a has a vastly different grammar to Basic–"

"Basic is at least eight different languages," Cody interjects, "all with their own distinct grammar structures, dropped into a trash compactor and melded together with no rhyme or reason into one barely-cohesive mess."

Obi-Wan wrinkles hir nose in that way that means ze knows Cody's right but refuses to admit it. " _Kaysh_ doesn't have a possessive form."

"Kaysh's? Be'kaysh? Be'ysh?"

"Mando'a pronouns don't distinguish between subjective and objective!"

"If you ask me, that's a ridiculous system anyway," Cody says, with another shrug. "Just use _kaysh_ for both."

"...Kaysh hit Cody round the head. Cody was hit by kaysh. This took place in be'ysh rooms. This took place in kaysh's rooms?"

"Kaysh's sounds better."

Obi-Wan doesn't reply, just stares at Cody for several seconds, mouthing what Cody would bet good liquor are other ways of conjugating this new pronoun set, and then a grin breaks out across hir face and ze's closing the meager space between them, wrapping one hand around Cody's waist and the other through his hair and pressing their lips together with great enthusiasm.

Gods, but his Jedi can kiss.

"That means you like it, then?" Cody asks, when he can bring himself to move away. As little as he wants to, they _were_ in the middle of a conversation.

Obi-Wan is still grinning. "You made me a _pronoun set_."

"Well, I don't know if I'd put it like that–" Cody starts, then abandons the pretense of arguing as Obi-Wan starts kissing along his jaw. "Changed my mind, whatever you say, please don't stop."

"We won't arrive at the rendezvous point for another eight hours," Obi-Wan says, words muffled somewhat by the kisses kaysh is still pressing into Cody's skin. "And it seems we've no better way to occupy our time."

"You definitely just implied you'd rather be going over battle strategy, and I'd take offense," Cody pants out, voice already slightly breathy, Obi-Wan is now using kaysh's teeth, "But honestly you could confess to murdering every other member of the 212th right now and I– _Fuck_ , as long as you keep doing that I wouldn't care."

"You made me a pronoun set," Obi-Wan says again, still grinning wide as anything, and then kaysh drops to kaysh's knees in front of him and Cody lets out a long string of expletives before shoving his own hand between his teeth to keep the entire upper deck from knowing precisely how good Obi-Wan is with kaysh's tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> SO, lot of ground to cover here kids!
> 
> nàbhais [NAR-vas] is the in-universe equivalent for ‘non-binary’ that i made up. it’s not a direct equivalent tho bc the star wars galaxy doesnt have one overarching gender binary; a better definition would be ‘identifying outside of the expected gender/s’. in this au there’s no real distinction btwn non-binary & trans, youre either aist [ass-t] (cis) or nàbhais, or you opt out of that labelling system entirely cuz youre from a smart place that doesnt assign gender at all. worldbuilding!
> 
> im no linguist but i cribbed then messily abbreviated words from scottish gaelic, cuz it’s canon that basic is a descendant of pidgin trade languages heavily influenced by old coruscanti & what’s the point in anything if i can’t make old coruscanti scottish gaelic
> 
> kaysh is pronounced KAIsh (k as in kill, ai as in bye, sh as in shake, all one syllable). if i ever write another fic in this 'verse post-this one i'll probly write it k'sh just bc grammatical conventions/aesthetics. (tfw u drop letters to fit english convention but follow the abbreviation scheme of mando'a).
> 
> also im on tumblr [here](http://notquiteaghost.tumblr.com/ao3).


End file.
